Tetairoa McMillan Is Already the Engine of Carolina’s Passing Game in Fantasy Football

Tetairoa McMillan did exactly what the Panthers drafted him to do as a rookie: give Bryce Young a true No. 1 receiver. The former Arizona standout cleared 1,000 yards, dominated the team’s target share, and immediately became the engine of Carolina’s passing game. There are still areas to clean up, particularly in tight-window and contested-catch situations, but with more offensive line help, another vertical receiver added to the room, and a possible Year 4 leap from Young, McMillan’s 2026 fantasy profile has plenty of room to grow.

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Tetairoa McMillan’s Rookie Season

With the 8th-overall selection in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Carolina Panthers made Tetairoa McMillan the second wide receiver off the board, in an attempt to continue surrounding Bryce Young with fresh young talent. The former Arizona standout spent all three years of his college career in Tucson, leading all true freshman receivers nationwide in receiving yards in 2022, landing on the third-team AP All-American team in 2023, and finishing out 2024 with first-team All-American honors.

At 6’4”, 219 pounds, McMillan used his size and massive catch radius to accumulate 3,400+ yards over those three seasons, and it didn’t take long for him to flash at the next level, either. Hitting 100 yards in only his second professional game, he would finish out his rookie season by catching 70 of his 120 targets for 1,014 yards and seven touchdowns.

Not everything was perfect throughout McMillan’s first NFL campaign, though. According to ESPN’s OPEN score, he would rank t-65th among 110 qualified receivers, and though nothing in his prospect profile hinted at some deep-field burner, his relative inability to separate consistently downfield was compounded when he was unable to convert those looks into receptions. Of 97 qualifiers, McMillan ranked 88th in contested catch rate (30.4%) and 70th in catch rate on throws into tight windows (13.3%). Now, some of that can absolutely be turned around on his quarterback, Bryce Young, who finished 29th in on-target rate from in-pocket throws (71.2%), but we’d like to see those numbers bumped up a little bit so we can pull some more consistent fantasy weeks out of the wide receiver in Year 2.

Where he was undoubtedly fantastic in his rookie season was in the intermediate areas of the field. McMillan would receive the 13th-most targets among the league’s wide receivers on “outs” and “digs” (35), while ranking behind only Amon-Ra St. Brown (589) in yardage (427). On those specific routes, McMillan was lined up in the slot 28.3% of the time. Every other target from 2025, he was in the slot only 19.0% of the time, despite scoring 0.41 fantasy points per route run in that alignment, the 13th-best mark in the league. So, finding more ways to free him up on those routes should be a priority heading into 2026.

And there may be one important offseason addition that could help the team move further in that direction.

The Panthers’ Offense in 2026

With the main pieces of the offensive coaching staff being held over from the first playoff appearance in the franchise’s last nine years, any big changes figure to come in the form of fresh faces on the roster. The first place they looked to improve was, once again, along the offensive line. With left tackle Ikem Ekwonu nursing a torn patellar tendon suffered in their 34-31 Wild Card loss in January, the team needed protection up front. Carolina added Rasheed Walker and Stone Forsythe in free agency before grabbing Monroe Freeling with the 19th-overall selection in the NFL Draft, giving them more leeway with Ekwonu’s early-season health.

But potentially more importantly for McMillan, specifically, was the addition of former Tennessee Volunteer, Chris Brazzell. Brazzell made his hay through his 3+ college years as a field-stretching demon, using his 4.37-speed and great body control to average 15.3 yards per reception on 135 grabs (2,061 yards). He did so while lining up out wide a massive 93.2% of the time, and per his Reception Perception sample, he lined up on the outside right a whopping 95.5% of the time. That’s, in theory, great news for McMillan if the rookie were to log extensive snaps in Year 1, but that comes with some caveats.

Brazzell is undoubtedly an upgrade on Xavier Legette or Brycen Tremayne if he hits the ground running, the two players who had the second- and fourth-most out-wide snaps in 2025, but he still needs some work on the nuances of his game before he can be counted on to consistently allow McMillan to find more time in the slot, where he can unlock a larger fantasy ceiling.

The only other potentially significant movement in this offense is the relinquishment of play-calling duties from head coach Dave Canales to offensive coordinator Brad Idzik. Canales admitted this was a difficult decision, but that Idzik has been “...my primary architect for what we do offensively with the run game, the pass game, and the connection of it.” Considering that, paired with the fact that Idzik has been on staff in some capacity since the 2019 season, we shouldn’t expect much change to the general mechanisms of the Panthers’ offense heading into 2026.

Projecting the Panthers’ Pass-Catchers in Fantasy

The aforementioned Legette/Brazzell battle for the WR3 role is worth keeping an eye on for potential best ball stacking purposes, but it’s unlikely to have redraft ramifications. That’s because we’ve seen that when Jalen Coker is healthy, his versatility and “safety valve” value have made the rest of the pass-catchers a bit of an afterthought. From Week 8 through the Wild Card Round, McMillan and Coker combined for 69.7% of the team’s air yards, 39.3% of the team’s target share, and 55.5% of the team’s yards. If we isolate that sample to only the last five post-bye weeks, those respective numbers jump to 71.7%, 38.8%, and 61.1%, with both players receiving exactly 30 targets.

This doesn’t place Coker into WR2 consideration for fantasy, but it does look quite clear that he’s the No. 2 pass-catcher for Carolina. Instead, he should be a very intriguing dart-throw option down at his WR55 ADP, with the potential to find his way into our lineups if we do see that next step forward from Young and this offense.

As for Tetairoa McMillan, he still needs both the offense and his own tight-window/contested-catch efficiency to take a step forward before we project him as more than a mid-tier WR2. But it’s far from impossible. McMillan is the clear engine of this offense, and we’ve seen weirder things than a great rookie year setting the table for a fantastic sophomore campaign. We just need to see more out of Young and some sort of consistency from another boundary receiver so we can see him spend some more time moving around the formation.

Bottom Line

• Tetairoa McMillan already looks like the clear engine of Carolina’s passing game. A 1,000-yard rookie season on 120 targets is the kind of foundation we want to bet on, especially for a receiver who can win in the intermediate areas of the field and dominate first-read usage.
• There are still some concerns to iron out. McMillan needs to be better in tight-window and contested-catch situations, Bryce Young still has to take another step as a passer, and Carolina needs someone like Chris Brazzell or Xavier Legette to provide enough boundary stability to let McMillan move around the formation more often.
• According to 4for4's Multi-Site ADP, McMillan is coming off boards as the WR19 in the middle of the fourth round. I think that's a fantastic price, particularly if you've started off with an RB-heavy build. He's a reasonable bet as a fantasy team's WR1, and has the requisite floor to operate as a very strong WR2.